First Families of Virginia - English Heritage, Second Sons

English Heritage, Second Sons

Many of the original English colonists considered members of the First Families of Virginia migrated to the Colony of Virginia. This migration took place during the English Civil War and English Interregnum period (1642–1660), after the first thanksgiving in Virginia (1619) held by Captain John Woodlief. Royalists left England on the accession to power of Oliver Cromwell and his Parliament. Because most of Virginia's leading families recognized Charles II as King following the execution of Charles I in 1649, Charles II reputedly called Virginia his "Old Dominion" – a nickname that endures today. The affinity of many early aristocratic Virginia settlers for the Crown led to the term "distressed Cavaliers", often applied to the Virginia oligarchy. Many Cavaliers who served under King Charles I fled to Virginia. Thus it came to be that FFVs often refer to Virginia as "Cavalier Country". These men were offered rewards of land, etc., by King Charles II but they had settled in Virginia and so remained in Virginia.

Most of such early settlers in Virginia were so-called "Second Sons". Primogeniture favored the first sons' inheriting lands and titles in England. Virginia evolved in a society of second or third sons of English aristocracy who inherited land grants or land in Virginia. They formed part of what became the southern elite in America.

In some cases, longstanding ties between families of the English aristocracy simply transplanted themselves to the new colony. In one case, for instance, ancestral ties between the Spencer family of Bedfordshire and the Washington family meant that it was a Spencer who secured the land grant on which the Washingtons would later build their Mount Vernon home. These sorts of ties were common in the early colony, as aristocratic families shuttled back and forth between England and Virginia, maintaining their connections with the mother country and with each other.

The reins of power were held by a thin network of increasingly interrelated families. "As early as 1660 every seat on the ruling Council of Virginia was held by members of five interrelated families," writes British historian John Keegan, "and as late as 1775 every council member was descended from one of the 1660 councillors."

The skein of ties among Virginia families was a legacy of England's ancestral feudalism: in a pre-industrial economy based largely on the possession of land, the ownership of that land was tightly controlled, and often passed between families of corresponding social rank. The Virginia economy, predicated on the institution of slavery and not on mercantile pursuits, meant that the gentry could keep tight rein on the levers of power, which passed in somewhat orderly fashion from family to family. (In the more modern mercantile economy of the north, social mobility became more prominent, and the power of the elite was muted by the forces of the market economy.)

Many of the great Virginia dynasties traced their roots to families like the Lees and the Fitzhughs who traced lineage to England's county families and baronial legacies. But not all: even the most humble Virginia immigrants aspired to the English manorial trappings of their "betters". Virginia history is not the sole province of English aristocrats. Such families as the Shackelfords, who gave their name to a Virginia hamlet, rose from modest beginnings in Hampshire to a place in the Virginia firmament based on hard work and smart marriages. At the same time other once-great families were decimated not only by the English Civil War, but also by the enormous power of the London merchants to whom they were in debt and who could move markets with the stroke of a pen.